Traditionally ozone is used for water treatment and other applications where high oxidation performance is required. More recently there is emerging a need for ozone in semiconductor fabrication. One use of ozone is in the construction of layered silicon integrated circuits, especially for creating insulating layers. Ozone is also useful in semiconductor manufacturing processes such as for removing hydrocarbons and cleaning in general, which is otherwise often done with acids that are dangerous and difficult to dispose of in contrast to ozone, which reverts to oxygen and creates no such problem.
The use of ozone in the semiconductor industry has imposed increased demands on ozone generator equipment. For semiconductor applications, for example, the ozone must be very pure; yet some present ozone generators use elastomeric seals and electrode materials which can contaminate the ozone. The ozone generator in semiconductor applications should be low cost and small and compact so as to occupy as little space as possible in the manufacturing area. Yet current ozone generators are often large and may require substantial ancillary refrigeration equipment in order to achieve needed ozone production rates. In order to reduce the size and increase compactness while maintaining ozone production, some ozone generators distribute the necessary electrode area over a number of smaller cells. This introduces uneven gas flow to and from the various cells, which detracts from optimum ozone production efficiency. The industry also demands high reliability and low down time of the equipment. However, many present ozone generators use a proliferation of elastomeric seals in contact with the ozone which leads to deterioration and leaking. Further, routine helium leak detection methods require a vacuum to be applied inside the ozone generator which normally is subject to positive pressure. The nature of the seals in some such generators prevents effective helium vacuum leak detection procedures. Similar problems may occur in generation of other reactive gases.